New Labour has excessively relied on mammoth databases and wide powers of data-sharing, on the pretext that it will make government more effective and the citizen more secure. Its track record demonstrates the opposite, with intrusive and expensive databases gathering masses of our personalinformation - but handled so recklessly that we are exposed to greater risk.A Conservative government will take a fundamentally different approach. We believe that your personal information belongs to you, not the state. Where private details are collected bygovernment, they are held on trust. The government must be held accountable to its citizens, not theother way round. We would be guided by the following principles:•Fewer –not more – giant central government databases.•Fewer personal details, accurately recorded and held only by specific authorities - on a need-to-know basis only, and for limited periods of time.•Wherever possible, personal data will be controlled by individual citizens, who have the power to decide which agencies can access or modify this information.•Greater checks on data-sharing between government departments, quangos and local councils.•Stronger duties on government to keep the private information it gathers safe.In practice, this means:•Scrapping the National Identity Register and ContactPoint database.•Establishing clear principles for the use and retention of DNA on the National DNA Database,including ending the permanent or prolonged retention of innocent people’s DNA.•Restricting and restraining local council access to personal communications data.•Reviewing protection of personal privacy from the surveillance state as part of a British Bill of Rights.•Strengthening the audit powers and independence of the Information Commissioner.•Requiring Privacy Impact Assessments on any proposals for new legislation or other measuresthat involve data collection or sharing at the earliest opportunity. Require government toconsult the Information Commissioner on the PIA and publish his findings.•Immediately submitting the Home Office’s plans for the retention of - and access to -communications data to the Information Commissioner for pre-legislative scrutiny.•Requiring new powers of data-sharing to be introduced into law by primary legislation, not byorder.•Appointing a Minister and senior civil servant (at Director General level) in each governmentministry with responsibility for departmental operational data security.